Sometimes there is a need to sense a characteristic of an object of interest, such as, but not limited to, a temperature, a pressure, a strain, or the like, from a remote distance. For example, the object may be across a room or in a remote building. Further, it may be desirable to sense characteristics of an object that may be moving or that may be in different locations at different times.
In many such situations it is not possible to communicatively couple the sensing device to the object of interest by the use of wires, optic fibers, or RF links to make the sensing measurement. With an optical-based sensor, the sensing might be made by shining a beam of light onto the optical-based sensor and sensing the light reflected from the optical-based sensor. But if the optical-based sensor is very small, and/or if the distance between the optical-based sensor and the detecting sensor is great, the returning light reflected from the optical-based sensor may not be readily detectable and/or discernable if received. For example, the background scatter of light reflected from the optical-based sensor may be significant enough such that an insufficient amount of returning light is detectable by the detecting sensor. As another example, optical background noise from other light sources may interfere with and/or mask the reflected light signal such that the returning light reflected from the optical-based sensor becomes lost in the optical background noise generated by the other light sources.
An optically powered resonant integrated microstructure (O-RIMS) pressure sensor is operable to sense characteristics of an object of interest based upon detection of modulated light reflected from the O-RIMS optical-based sensor. An exemplary O-RIMS sensor is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,710,355, entitled “OPTICALLY POWERED RESONANT INTEGRATED MICROSTRUCTURE PRESSURE SENSOR” to Daniel W. Youngner, filed on Feb. 7, 2002, which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. Although this O-RIMS optical-based sensor may be suitable for detecting characteristics of an object of interest under a variety of conditions, it may not be a very effective optical-based sensor when the source of the light that is incident on the O-RIMS optical-based sensor is remote, and/or when the detecting sensor is remote from the O-RIMS optical-based sensor.